Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!

The Truth About Fad Dieting

Name of Source- Twist December 2003

Title of My Report- The Truth About Fad Dieting

Summary-

In the world today there are many different types of diets people are using to try to lose weight. However, some of these are not the best way. There are scary side effects to them. The type of fad diets I am going to cover is low- carb diet, diet pills, skipping meals, and single food diets. These are just a few of the fad diets out there.

Low- carb dieting is defiantly a major type of diet people use. Twist magazine polled there readers and found out the 27% had tried this diet. Low carb dieting is when you eat no/ low carbs. So, this means mostly meat and absolutely no bread, grains, or cereals. However, the problem is that carbohydrates are one of the body’s main energy sources. When your body doesn’t have enough it breaks down on fat. When that happens your body goes into ketosis, which is not a healthy state. Also, anywhere down the road you wanted to quit this diet you gain back more weight then you started off with.

The next type of diet I am going to talk about is diet pills. Twist says that 11% of their readers have tried diet pills. Using pills can cause to lots of health problems such as malnutrition, anxiety, heart palpitations, low blood sugar, shortness or breath, and more.

Another type of dieting people have tried is skipping meals. This is extremely dangerous. When you skip a meal a day you are not giving your body enough calories, which it needs for energy. It is also said that skipping one meal can eventually lead to major eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.

The last type of diet I am going to tell you about is single food diets. This is also very dangerous. When you are only eating one type of food you are not giving your body nutrition from the other parts of the food triangle. When you only eat one type of food you lose muscle and water instead of fat. Plus, this diet can actually make you gain weight since it makes your metabolism slow down and you burn fewer calories.

How might this issue effect me, my family or friends-

Dieting could affect me, my family, or my friends any time. If any of them try these types of diets it could affect them and me. It would affect them, because it would hurt their health. Plus, if they gain the weight back it would hurt their self- esteem. It would also be hurting me, because I would know they were hurting themselves. This can happen to anyone. In the world today people might say these diets are okay even when they are not, leading people to believe the wrong things. However, the bottom line is the best way to lose weight is to exercise regularly and to eat healthy.